


Necessary Evils

by Tierfal



Category: Death Note
Genre: Alternate Universe, Family, Humor, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-20
Updated: 2010-02-20
Packaged: 2017-10-07 10:19:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/64187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tierfal/pseuds/Tierfal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Near demurs, but with a look Mello's seen just once before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Necessary Evils

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jenwryn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenwryn/gifts).



> Prompt was "necessary evils." Uh, evidently. XD

When Mello puts the groceries away and moves to step into the living room, he discovers that he… can't.

"Um," he says, pointedly.

Near's train track runs around the whole perimeter of the room, sloping gently to rise over the television set, supported by pillars of stacked game boxes. The train rattles unperturbedly along, Near watching it from where he's curled up on the floor with his head resting on the small of Matt's back. Matt, for his part, is lying on his stomach, dressed in his pajamas, playing on his computer and looking pleased with the circumstances.

He glances up at Mello and smiles. "We need to find a better place."

Mello resists the urge to look around at their apartment, which is shitty but suitable. "What the hell for?"

"Have you seen the bathroom lately?" Matt asks. "The mold's going to be the monster in a B-movie pretty soon. Near's allergies are acting up."

He reaches back, contorting a little, to ruffle Near's thick hair. Near is always so damned white that it's hard to differentiate _kind of sick_ from _deathly ill_ from _completely normal_, but when he mumbles "They're not too bad," his congested voice says it all.

…literally.

Maybe Mello could do with a change of scenery himself.

He climbs carefully over the train track and sits down beside them both, joining in the hair-ruffling, his and Matt's hands colliding, Near wrinkling his nose and struggling to squirm away.

"We can move," Mello decides. "It's not like we don't have money."

"We don't have to," Near demurs, but with a look Mello's seen just once before—a look he saw when they were kids, and Near got a case of pneumonia so bad he ended up in the hospital again.

Roger had taken Matt and Mello to go see him on the second day, and he had reaped dirty looks from all the nurses for it—Mello was loud, wild, and insuppressible, bouncing through the halls, asking questions of the doctors, and poking at all the machines. Matt had tried to keep pace with him after a couple minutes of chaos, because Matt had realized that Mello wasn't on cocaine, as most of the staff had probably started to suspect. Really, he was trying to fill the space. He was trying to make the dull white walls and the dark rooms and the insidiously-beeping monitors feel a little more like home.

Near had realized it, too. They'd visited him in the PICU for a long while, where he'd looked very, very small in the big, tilted bed, with wires trailing from the inside of his elbows, a bandage with a blinky red light thing on his finger, and a tiny tube stuck up his nose. He'd been tired, because of the recovery or from the solitude Mello didn't know, and the purple crescents under his eyes had made him look even more like L. He'd watched Mello trying to make faces around the blue surgical mask, and he'd smiled, a little, and given them that look.

Mello sees it now—it's all in the gigantic gray eyes, and it's unmistakable. He leans down and kisses Near's forehead.

"We'll move," he says, "you pathetic little fuzzball."

"I am neither fuzzy nor a ball," Near mutters back.

"Are so," Mello responds, and sure enough, Near contracts like a potato bug as Matt starts tickling.

There is a lot of giggling and wailing after that, and when they've tickled Near into submission, Matt settles down with Craigslist, and Mello curls up with them and examines the train as it chugs steadily past.

While they're at it, they can get a bigger bed.


End file.
